Don't get me wrong, I am not a Symbian fanboy and I think Nokia held onto it for too long, but the notion that "no one was buying Nokia phones" is not the whole story. It probably resonates with the average HN reader, who is relatively young, lives in the US and carries an iPhone or Android device. It probably also accurately represents where the Symbian market was going long term. But it's not the whole story.
I can give you a reference that is close to me. Windows phone is 2nd place in latin america (http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/windows-phone-snags-second-...) where the first is Blackberry and nobody used Symbian.
For example, just from press reports that I can find on Google, Nokia sold 20 million Symbian phones in Q4 2011, and 4.4 million Windows Phones in Q4 2012.
Yeah that was what I understood. However, I was just giving an example of a Non-US market where that were not true :)
"For example, just from press reports that I can find on Google, Nokia sold 20 million Symbian phones in Q4 2011"
That's true, but you have to also considerate the tendency:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/news/smartphoneshipmen...
At that moment it looks like Symbian was running out of gas.